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This post does not come from the Reed Smith side of the blog.

After two grueling months, the second bellwether trial in the Pinnacle Hip Implant MDL has gone to the jury.  The last time that happened—in 2014—the jury came back with a defense verdict.  It was a resounding and, to some, upset victory for the defense in a plaintiff-selected case in a Texas court against Texas plaintiffs’ lawyers.

But that was then.Continue Reading Trouble in Texas?: The Latest Pinnacle Hip Implant Trial Goes to the Jury

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This post comes from the non-Reed Smith side of this blog.

With some courts, the § 510(k) clearance of a medical device is not only insufficient to support preemption. It’s not probative enough to be discussed at trial.  The MDL court in the Boston Scientific Pelvic Repair System Products Liability Litigation is one such court, consistently excluding from trial evidence of 510(k) clearance of the pelvic mesh device.  According to a recent decision by one of the courts overseeing a trial on remand from the MDL, the MDL court read Medtronic v. Lohr to hold that § 510(k) clearance addresses only the device’s equivalence with an already marketed device, not safety.  Winebarger v. Boston Scientific Corp., 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 126616, at *13-14 (W.D.N.C. Sept. 22, 2015) (describing the basis for the MDL court’s decision).

We’re not so convinced. The 510(k) process is not a complete abandonment of safety considerations.  And it certainly provides evidence of whether the manufacturer behaved reasonably.  Congress enacted the 510(k) process, in part, to enable quicker clearance for new devices that are equivalent to devices that have already been on the market and have accumulated some sort of safety and efficacy record.  Moreover, the 510(k) process is an inescapable reality for device manufacturers.  A discussion of the process, how it was followed, and the safety information that was provided or available through the marketing of equivalent devices is relevant to assessing the reasonableness of the manufacturer’s actions.  If plaintiffs want to minimize its importance, establish that it says nothing about safety, or show what the manufacturer failed to do, they are free to present such evidence.  The jury can then decide the relevance of this evidence.

Fortunately, the remand court, applying North Carolina law, got this right – sort of.  In North Carolina, a jury may consider the “extent to which the design or formulation [of the device] conformed to any applicable government standard.”  Winebarger, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS, at *19 (quoting North Carolina’s Product Liability Act).  And so, unlike the MDL court, the remand court determined that evidence of § 510(k) clearance is admissible.  But introduction of that evidence will likely come with a fairly severe limiting instruction:

The fact that BSC followed the requisite 510(k) protocol – limited as it is – prior to marketing its Uphold device has minimal probative value regarding BSC’s efforts to adhere to FDA processes and procedure generally. . . .  Admissibility might depend upon a limiting instruction that 510(k) clearance is not to be considered as evidence that the FDA authorized the Uphold as safe and approved its intended use as such; that 510(k) clearance is not evidence that BSC satisfied any standard of care in designing the Uphold device.  For these reasons, the Court’s preliminary ruling on Plaintiff’s motion is that the 510(k) clearance process is admissible subject to a limiting instruction consistent with the terms of the instant Order.

Id. at *22-23.Continue Reading Section 510(k) Clearance: While it Doesn’t Support Preemption, Is It Relevant Evidence at Trial?

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It’s been one of those weeks and it’s only Tuesday.  So, we aren’t going to try to be clever or witty today (we know some of you are relieved).  Nor are we going for scholarly or particularly profound.  We’re just going to point you to an interesting decision that popped up on our radar today

…

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“Jurisfiction” is a word coined by Jasper Fforde, author of the Tuesday Next series, one of the more sophisticated set of children’s works that has come to populate this post-Harry Potter era.  To be very brief, Jurisfiction is the fictional police force for BookWorld, one of Fforde’s fictional universes.  Tuesday is a Jurisfiction agent (sometimes rather more than that).

“Jurisfiction,” unfortunately, is also something we see in our line of work, sometimes making us wonder whether the likes of Emperor Zhark, the Red Queen, and Pinky Perkins may have aliases who serve in the all-too-real judicial branches here in the States.  Jurisfiction is shorthand for a decision that gets a legal issue totally bollixed  – perhaps applying the UltraWord to the issue – allowing the user to control the plot, garbling it, and ultimately making all precedent useless.

We recently ran across a shining example of jurisfiction in the discussion of FDA warning letters found in Mihok v. Medtronic, Inc., ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2015 WL 4722847 (D. Conn. Aug. 10, 2015).  Here’s what Mihok held on that subject:

The Complaint is rooted in FDA Warning Letters which state that [defendant] failed to comply with the CGMP regulations. . . .  While perhaps not dispositive on the issue, the FDA’s conclusions and interpretations of its own regulations are likely to receive a considerable degree of deference.  See, e.g., Conroy v. Dannon Co., Inc., No. 12 CV 6901(VB), 2013 WL 4799164, at *6 (S.D.N.Y. May 9, 2013) (stating that the FDA’s interpretations of its own regulations promulgated under title 21 “are ‘controlling unless plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulations’ or there is any other reason to doubt that they reflect the FDA’s fair and considered judgment”) (citing and quoting PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, ––– U.S. ––––, ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2567, 2575, 180 L.Ed.2d 580 (2011)); Dorsey v. Housing Auth. of Baltimore City, 984 F.2d 622, 632 (4th Cir. 1993) (finding district court abused its discretion in refusing to consider regulatory agency’s assessment of defendant’s compliance with agency regulations and noting that the district “court should welcome [the agency’s] appraisal of [the defendant’s] compliance with regulations, given its concern for deference to agency interpretations of its own regulations”). Indeed, it is precisely when a court is called upon to interpret the regulations, i.e., when they are ambiguous, and where their application to facts raises complex issues, that the court is most likely to defer to the FDA’s prior determinations.  See Wilson v. Frito-Lay N. Am., Inc., 961 F. Supp.2d 1134, 1142 (N.D. Cal. 2013) (noting that “an agency’s informal interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation is [typically] controlling” but declining to give “deference to two warning letters that the FDA sent” because neither party to the case “contended that the FDA regulations . . . [w]ere ambiguous, and the Court d[id] not find that they [we]re”); James T. O’Reilly, et al., 1 Food & Drug Admin. §4:56 (4th Ed. 2015) (“The FDA is allowed great deference in the interpretations of its own regulations…. The more complex the issue, the more scope is likely to be given for the FDA to draw the interpretations.”).

As to deference, Defendants cite a non-binding case, Schering-Plough Healthcare Prods., Inc. v. Schwarz Pharma, Inc., 547 F. Supp.2d 939 (E.D. Wisc. 2008), for the proposition that “a warning letter from the FDA is not considered a final agency action,” and contend that, as a result, “Plaintiffs’ allegations … raise legal questions as to the potential effects of various actions by a federal agency … [which] should be decided in a federal forum.”  The Second Circuit has not taken a position on whether an FDA Warning Letter is considered a final agency action.  Even if it is not, such letters may still be entitled to deference.  See Cmty. Health Ctr. v. Wilson-Coker, 311 F.3d 132, 138 (2d Cir. 2002) (“[E]ven relatively informal [agency] interpretations, such as letters from regional administrators, warrant respectful consideration” where the statute at issue is complex and the regulatory agency possesses “considerable expertise”) (citations and quotations omitted).  Regardless, they may serve as evidence of regulatory violations.  Gelber v. Stryker Corp., 788 F. Supp.2d 145, 155–56 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (finding plaintiffs who provided FDA Warning Letters as evidence of violations of FDA regulations stated claims for manufacturing defects).

Mihok, 2015 WL 4722847, at *5-6 (citations not omitted, for once).  Under this analysis, there being no undecided FDA-related issue, Mihok was remanded to state court.Continue Reading Warning Letters and Jurisfiction

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We have had some time now to ruminate over the South Carolina Supreme Court’s opinion in State of South Carolina ex rel. Wilson v. Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., No. 2012-206987, 2015 WL 775094 (S.C. Feb. 25, 2014).  In Wilson, the state attorney general brought an enforcement action against the manufacturer of the atypical antipsychotic Risperdal under the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act (having the dysphonius acronym “SCUTPA” in the opinion) and recovered $327 million in civil penalties. Although the Supreme Court reduced the award to $136 million, it mainly affirmed a verdict that, in our view, has multiple problems.  What problems?  Well, how about a nine-figure civil penalty for “deceptive” conduct when the state neither alleged nor proved that a single person was deceived or that the conduct had any adverse impact on anyone?  We call that a problem, but we’ll get back to that particular point in a moment.

Those who read our 2014 Ten Best column and those who dialed into our teleseminar in January on those cases know a little about Risperdal and the various states’ lawsuits against the drug’s manufacturer.  What happened was that the FDA asked all manufacturers of atypical antipsychotics to review data on diabetes, which resulted in a new warning on diabetes being added to the labels.  The FDA also required a Dear Healthcare Provider Letter, which the manufacturer of Risperdal sent, but the letter included information that was technically off label.

That resulted in an FDA warning letter in April 2004 stating that the DHCP Letter was “false or misleading” in violation of the FDCA, which in turn resulted in the manufacturer sending a corrective DHCP Letter.  Wilson, 2015 WL 775094, at **5-6.  That seems to be when various state attorneys general and their contingent-fee lawyers took interest.  Two of our Ten Best cases of 2014 were state false claims act cases arising out of these events where the states of Louisiana and Arkansas recovered very large judgments against this manufacturer.  Both verdicts were reversed on appeal, which was good news.Continue Reading An Atypical View of Causation and Harm from South Carolina

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The MDL court in West Virginia in the pelvic mesh litigation is continuing to issue pre-trial opinions.  Amongst those issued last week was an opinion addressing 24 motions in limine filed by plaintiffs and defendant, Boston Scientific Corporation (“BSC”).  Eghnayem v. Boston Scientific Corp., 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 153284 (S.D.W. Va. Oct. 28, 2014).  We won’t address all the court’s rulings.  A number of them, as is almost always the case, were denied without prejudice to re-raising them at trial.  But some are either interesting or address issues frequently raised in mass tort trials.  So we discuss them here.

Exclusion of Material Safety Data Sheets (“MSDS”).  Admissibility of MSDS is often an issue in drug and device law litigation.  BSC sought to exclude the MSDS for polyethylene because it was not used in BSC’s mesh product.  They won – for obvious reasons.  The loophole that plaintiffs apparently tried to exploit was that certain BSC employees answered questions at their depositions about the polyethylene MSDS, incorrectly believing that it was the MSDS for a different substance – polypropylene – that is contained in BSC’s mesh product.  The court figured that out and excluded the polyethylene MSDS.

BSC also tried to exclude the MSDS for polypropylene, a material that is in its product.  No luck. BSC argued that a representative from the chemical company that made the polypropylene testified that the MSDS cautionary language was not placed there for scientific concerns.  The court found that testimony to be unclear and that the witness had actually testified that he didn’t know who drafted the MSDS or why it was written.  The court denied BSC’s motion, so BSC went one for two on its attempts to exclude the MSDS.  Id. at *5-8.Continue Reading The West Virginia Pelvic Mesh Court Issues in Limine Rulings

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The MDL court in the pelvic mesh litigation issued in limine rulings for an upcoming trial involving Ethicon’s TVT Secur system.  In re Ethicon, Inc., 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14088 (S.D.W Va.  Feb. 5, 2014).  There were almost 30 rulings.  The motions addressed topics that ranged from the mundane, such as clinical trials and…

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(This post is from the Cozen side of the blog only.)

Whenever you remove a complaint that is an obvious case of fraudulent joinder, you think to yourself, “Why don’t they just admit it?”  “They” being the plaintiffs’ lawyers, and the admission being that they joined the hometown doctor or pharmacy or sales rep solely …

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If somebody were to ask us whether as a general proposition it’s relevant to the presentation of a product liability case about a prescription medical product that the FDA had approved/cleared the product and the defendant had complied with FDA regulations, our immediate reaction would be “Duh, of course, it’s relevant.”  We may have an overriding preemption or standing argument under Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs Legal Committee, 531 U.S. 341 (2001), but relevance?  Particular aspects of FDA approval or compliance might not pertain to the particular defect allegations in a given case, but in general, the relevance of the fact the FDA has allowed the product on the market, and that the manufacturer complied with pertinent FDA regulations, seems unassailable.

Ask that to the other side, however, and the answer will be “only if it helps me win.”  Plaintiffs are more than happy to offer evidence of FDA approval/compliance evidence – but only if it’s about non-approval/noncompliance.  If the FDA pedigree of a particular product doesn’t include any sort of FDCA violation, then the same counsel who so zealously advocated the relevance of the FDA last week is quite happy the next week to disavow every word of it.  That happened to us recently, hence this post.

When an application is required to sell an FDA-regulated product (including almost all such products likely to be involved in litigation), the manufacturer cannot sell it in the U.S. until and unless the FDA says ‘yes.’  Indeed, over a dozen states have statutes that, to one extent or another, presume that products passing FDA muster aren’t defective.  For reasons such as these, the overwhelming majority of the caselaw recognizes the relevance of the FDA’s decisions.

Putting aside preemption (which is predicated on federal, not state, legal principles) the general state-law rule is that a product’s compliance with FDA regulations – whether they’re characterized as “minimum” or otherwise, is relevant, albeit not controlling, in product liability litigation.

[A] product’s compliance with an applicable product safety statute or administrative regulation is properly considered in determining whether the product is defective.

Restatement (Third) of Torts, Products Liability §4(b) (1998).  The supporting Reporters’ Note to §4(b) confirms:

The overwhelming majority of jurisdictions hold that compliance with product safety regulation is relevant and admissible on the question of defectiveness, but is not necessarily controlling.Continue Reading FDA Device Clearance – Clearly Relevant

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FDA-regulated products now account for an estimated one-fifth of overall economic activity in the U.S. They have also been the focus of a litigation explosion. This timely guide covers all aspects of litigation involving drugs, medical devices, vaccines and other FDA-regulated prescription products.
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